China’s International Investment Strategy: Towards a Relational Normativity

Abstract

The edited volume under discussion aims to shed light on China’s international investment strategy along the bilateral, regional and global prong. In doing so, the contributors have sought to answer whether China is a rule-shaper or rule-breaker of international investment norms and whether it will be further liberalizing its domestic market for foreign investment. Despite their comprehensive analysis of individual subject areas where tensions arise between China investment practice at home and overseas and international standards, the reasons for China’s contradictory normative conduct in its various investment relationships remain underexplored. This article calls for a reconceptualization of the sources from which international investment law derives its binding force, namely based on relational normativity. This approach can transcend anxieties about China’s past, present, and future investment strategies and strengthen the normativity of the international rule of law with one of the world’s most prominent economic players instead.